Paranormal hunters have spooky time at old Louisiana hospital

The Missouri Paranormal and Crypto Society had an active evening of encounters with spirits, ghosts, or apparitions Friday, April 11 at the old Pike County District Hospital in Louisiana.
Society member and Louisiana Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Chris Koetters said the Saturday, April 12 session was not as active, but Friday’s definitely was.
“It’s like fishing,” Koetters said. “Sometimes you don’t get a bite and sometimes they’re jumping in the boat.”
Koetters was sitting on the third floor of the abandoned building when “I heard somebody whispering in my ear,” Koetters said. No one else in the room had spoken.
When Koetters played his tape recorder back “You could hear a male voice whispering something on the tape,” but it was not defined, he said.
A bit later, eight people on the same third floor heard someone “sprinting down the fourth floor,” Koetters said. A society investigator went to the fourth floor to find nothing.

Disappearing
figure

Forty-four people participated over the two nights, Koetters said.
One of them was Jeff Hoffman of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“I don’t believe or disbelieve,” in the paranormal, Hoffman said. “I’ve had weird things happen but I just don’t know.”
One occurred when he saw a black figure on a monitor during another spirit hunt. The figure did not appear on his tape and was not there when he looked from the monitor to where the figure had been standing.
What Hoffman does know is he has a lot of fun looking for spirits.
“We get to go to a lot of cool, historical places,” in Missouri, like the Pithian Castle in Springfield. The famous Crystal Grill on Broadway in St. Louis is another great haunt to hunt, Hoffman said.
Dottye Gott of Louisiana was there too, “because I believe in the hereafter,” she said.
Last year when Dottye’s husband Jim Gott, Sr. was ill, she was supposed to drive to the hospital to see him.
As she was getting ready, “something whispered in my ear, ‘you’re getting robbed,’” Gott said. She then went downstairs and had an overcoming feeling to scrub the kitchen floor.
When she was almost finished, she realized she was running late for the hospital. Gott had to stop by the family laundromat business on the way out of town and found the front door ajar.
“Three boys had broken in,” Gott said. “They might have hurt me if I had walked in on them. I felt like someone was watching over me.”
Raymond and Feather Chart of Bowling Green were also at Friday night’s session.
“I had a lot of experience with the paranormal when I was young,” Feather Chart said. “I lived in a haunted house in Wright City, so I’ve been interested in this stuff ever since.”